Considered harmful

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The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

considered harmful

Usage: adj. Derivation: Very common

considered harmful: adj.

[very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, Goto Statement Considered Harmful, fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars (text at http://www.acm.org/classics/). As it turns out (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26585.html), the title under which the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM's editor, Niklaus Wirth. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. (Years afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter called, inevitably, `Goto considered harmful' considered harmful. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies have borne titles of the form X considered Y. The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found at various places in this lexicon is related).

Sources

External links

• http://www.acm.org/classics/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26585.html

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